Viktor Frankl coined the term “tragic optimism” to describe the human ability to move forward with a positive attitude even when encountering hardship or challenges. Tragic optimism underpins personal resilience; for example, it has been identified as a predictor of well-being and resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic.

I believe that the Psychonomic Society can look towards the future with considerable optimism, notwithstanding some clear challenges and hardships that lie ahead for science and scientists.

The annual meeting in New York City was a resounding success. Not only was it the biggest meeting ever, but the “vibe” was consistently positive and intellectually exciting. We had a great keynote and stimulating symposia, including one sponsored by the Board on climate change that drew a large and engaged crowd. The financial position of the Society is gratifyingly solid, and our endowment has put long-term financial self-sufficiency within reach.

I am very proud of the Society, and I am grateful to have had the opportunity to serve on the Board for the last 5 years. It has been one of the most enjoyable tasks of my career, and I cannot thank my fellow Board members enough for their dedication and contributions to our decision making. I also want to thank our Executive Director, Lou Shomette, for his indefatigable leadership of the Society.

Being in such a strong position is particularly critical in light of the headwinds the Society will almost certainly encounter when the Trump administration assumes office in less than 2 months. A recent article in Science by Princeton anthropologist Agustin Fuentes highlights the attacks on researchers in public health, vaccines, and climate science that have involved figures within the incoming administration.

For any scientist, it must be disheartening that the incoming head of the Department of Health and Human Services has variously claimed that AIDS is not caused by HIV; that COVID-19 was ethnically targeted to spare Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people; or that Wifi causes cancer and a leaky brain. It now appears that all Trump appointees in the health arena, from the Center for Disease Control to the Food and Drug Administration, are also united in their opposition to vaccines. (In the real world, vaccines have saved over 154 million lives during the past 50 years.)

It might be tempting to seek comfort in the presumption that Psychonomic research is less likely to encounter political headwinds – after all, why would politicians care about models of lexical decision or the complex span?

This presumption ignores the fact that much Psychonomic research is highly relevant to society and thus has inevitable political consequences. For example, many Psychonomes study the cognition of misinformation – why do people believe falsehoods and why do they persist after correction? The misinformation research community includes one distinguished leadership awardee, one early career awardee, and two current Board members (full disclosure: I am one of them). Even researchers who do not explicitly study misinformation may be drawn into this arena: for example, a link can be drawn between repetition priming effects and the illusory truth effect, which in turn underlies many misinformation phenomena we observe in real life. Even research into basic perceptual phenomena may therefore attract unwanted political attention.

Donald Trump has promised to ban research into misinformation (which he mislabeled as censorship) within hours of taking office.

Members of the Psychonomic Society may therefore find their research to be imperilled by political manoeuvres or threatened withdrawal of funding. In my view, those challenges can only be met by scientific solidarity. It is not just scientists in other disciplines, be they climate scientists or public health researchers, that will come under attack. It will likely affect many of us, in particular those based in the U.S.

Fortunately, there are resources that can assist scientists who experience harassment or politically motivated attacks. My own experience has shown that, if you anticipate being targeted, it can be helpful to reach out to university administrators so they know what to expect—and why—ahead of time. It is even more helpful if you reach out to administrators on behalf of colleagues to show your support and solidarity.

We are a strong and successful Society, and we are ideally placed to support research into human cognition, even in circumstances that may turn out to be less than ideal. After all, it was an American president who memorably said that all we have to fear is fear itself.